PCB likely faces trouble over Oz tour insurance cover

Karachi, Feb 15 (ANI): The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is facing a predicament over the Australia’s scheduled tour of Pakistan next month, as an international insurance company has expressed its suspicion over existence of the board’s insurance cover if the tour is called off. PCB Chairman Nasim Ashraf had said that the board had insured the series for 7.4 million dollars with England’s Lloyds of London. However, Ashraf, was not sure whether the insurance contained a specific compensation clause in case tour was cancelled for security reasons. According to Voice of America (VoA), the media representative of the insurance company had said that his firm doesn’t sell insurance as such. We don’t sell any of the insurance. We provide a place that buyers and sellers can come together. As we do not insure things ourselves, rather act as a market for insurers, the best I can do is provide you with the names of the insurers that specializes in sports cancellation,” the Dawn quoted Bart Nash, the Lloyds of London media officer, as saying. Nash further said that he doubted if the board had understood the deal they had struck with his company. “I hesitate to say that it is usually the client that does not want to reveal details of deals, so if the PCB have, I suspect that the insurance exists,” he said. In a time when Australian tour to Pakistan is very bleak, such a statement by the insurance company has landed Ashraf in trouble and he needs to come out clean to explain this ambiguity. Some of the senior Australian cricketers had threatened to pull out from the tour adding that their participation was subject to clearance from a Cricket Australia security inspection team. The Cricket Australia delegation will arrive in Pakistan after the February 18 general elections. “We are aware of the significant concerns that the players have and they are concerns we share,” Cricket Australia’s public affairs manager Peter Young told had said. “We’re still moving through a process and we have a way to go before that process is finalized,” he added. (ANI)